In the previous articles, Jacob Sebastian looked at using XML to save a sales order with variable numbers of line items to a SQL Server
2000 database. In this part, he expands upon the processing to access that data from multiple nodes.
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How many times have you tried to save a sales order to your database? For many DBAs this is a common scenario and one of the challenges is the many round trips for the various line items. Jacob Sebastian brings us the first part of a four part series looking at how you can use XML to reduce the round trips in SQL Server 2000.
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SQL Server does a great job of handling concurrency & ensuring that users can make changes in multi-user systems without conflict. However there are times a strict calling order is needed.
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Attaching and detaching databases is old hat these days right? Do you know how to reattach a database that has more than 16 files? Or do you know what happens if you try to reattach a database that had two log files but one is missing/deleted? And even if you know the answer to that - do you know how to fix it without restoring from backup? Maybe it's not ALL old hat just yet!
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Part 1 of a 4 part series about ADO, this is a beginner level article designed to get you started using the ADO connection object. If you haven't used ADO so far, why not see what it's all about?
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Robert is our expert on dynamic sql. This week he offers some good hints for planning the contruction of a proc that will use dynamic sql. He also adds some suggestions on how to format the code so that when you return to it later, you can figure out what you were doing!
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We've had a lot of coverage of dynamic sql (including another great one from Robert Marda later this week) but this one is a little different. Done in a question/answer format, Andy tries to explain to junior developers why dynamic sql is to be avoided, how to do so, what to do when you can't.
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As Robin points out there is no built in way to make sure users have strong passwords when using SQL authentication. There are a couple changes you can make (with appropriate warnings!) that will allow you to do this. Read on to find out why and how.
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This articles proposes storing the source code for stored procedures on disk rather than in the database itself, the intent to give developers the ability to easily change them or potentially to allow third party encryption of source code. (Note from SSC: If you choose to implement a technique like this, please be sure you understand the implications of exec'ing strings)
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This article by Simon Galbraith (from Red Gate software, maker of SQL Compare) discusses migrating changes from development to staging, QA, and on to production. If you've never seen the need for a schema compare tool (Steve Jones!), this is worth reading.
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Ryan demonstrates how he arrived at a solution that allows you to create scripts from a stored procedure using SQL-DMO. If you get interested in DMO, we've got quite a bit of additional content here on the site to help you get going! Ryan is a new author here on the site, please take a minute to read his article, add a comment, maybe just say hello.
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Robert is our expert on dynamic sql. This week he offers some good hints for planning the contruction of a proc that will use dynamic sql. He also adds some suggestions on how to format the code so that when you return to it later, you can figure out what you were doing!
Read more...

We've had a lot of coverage of dynamic sql (including another great one from Robert Marda later this week) but this one is a little different. Done in a question/answer format, Andy tries to explain to junior developers why dynamic sql is to be avoided, how to do so, what to do when you can't.
Read more...